4.  The applicant was born in 1938 and lives in Sevastopol.
5.  On 20 June 2003 Ivan Mashchenko, the applicant’s husband, was reported by an ambulance team to have died in a garage cooperative complex. The same day the police examined the site and ordered a forensic examination of the body.
6.  On 23 June 2003 the applicant received a medical certificate indicating that her husband had died of a head injury.
7.  On 30 June 2003 the Gagarinskiy District Prosecutors’ Office in Sevastopol concluded that Mr Mashchenko’s death had resulted from a head injury caused by an accidental fall and there were no grounds for instituting criminal proceedings. They referred, primarily, to the statements by D., who had submitted that his friend Mr Mashchenko had accidentally fallen on his back in D.’s presence, after both of them had consumed some alcohol in the garage. An ambulance had been called, but Mr Mashchenko died before it had arrived. The investigation also referred to the statements by K., the garage complex guardian, who had submitted that he had called the ambulance, after having been informed by G., the garage complex electrician, that Mr Mashchenko had been lying on the floor and in need of assistance.
8.  In September 2003 the applicant appealed against the decision of 30 June 2003 in the Gagarinskiy District Court of Sevastopol. She noted, in particular, that she had only been apprised of the above decision on 3 September 2003 and had not been provided with a copy of it; that the authorities had neither questioned her as part of their inquiry, nor informed her of the progress in the proceedings. Likewise, they had not studied her husband’s medical file and had examined the location where the death had occurred in a perfunctory manner.
9.  In the meantime, on 31 July 2003, following the completion of all laboratory tests, a forensic expert concluded that Ivan Mashchenko had in fact died of a heart attack, while his head injury could be classified as a minor one.
10.  On 26 February 2004 the court revoked the disputed decision of 30 June 2003, having concluded that the inquiry had been perfunctory. It referred to the discrepancies between the death certificate and the expert conclusion concerning the cause of Mr Mashchenko’s death; found that the investigation had failed to question all pertinent witnesses, including the ambulance staff, who had been first to certify Mr Mashchenko’s death, and noted that there had been unreconciled factual discrepancies between the accounts of the incident provided by the main witnesses D. and G.
11.  On 30 April 2004 the District Prosecutor’s Office took a fresh decision not to institute criminal proceedings.
12.  On 5 July 2004 this decision was revoked by the District Court, which found that its instructions had not been fulfilled in good faith.
13.  Between 2004 and 2011 nine more decisions not to institute criminal proceedings were taken (on 5 January and 8 August 2005, 16 August 2006, 14 May and 8 June 2007, 14 March, 13 June and 24 October 2008 and 11 May 2010). All of them were subsequently revoked either by the Sevastopol City Prosecutor’s Office or by the District Court (on 1 August 2005, 24 May 2006, 10 April, 31 May and 22 November 2007, 6 May and 3 September 2008, 28 April 2010 and 25 March 2011 respectively) with reference to insufficiency of the measures taken and failure of the inquiring officers to fulfil the earlier instructions given to them. At various times these instructions concerned, in particular, the need to question additional witnesses, including the owners of the neighboring garage boxes and members of the ambulance team, reconcile factual discrepancies between the accounts of D., K., G. and some other witnesses as well as the discrepancies between the medical documents concerning the cause of Mr Mashchenko’s death. The inquiring officers were likewise instructed to explore the applicant’s allegations that her husband might have been hit by a vehicle or by a third party, in particular, a certain N.Z., owner of one of the garage boxes, with whom he had presumably had conflicts.
14.  On 2 June 2011 the District Prosecutor’s Office took a fresh decision not to institute criminal proceedings, finding that, regard being had to the evidence collected, in particular, the statements by D., G., K. and other witnesses and the expert conclusion that Mr Mashchenko had died of a heart attack, there had been no grounds to suspect any criminal wrongdoing.
15.  On 6 September 2011 the District Court revoked this decision, having found that its earlier instructions, as well as those of the City Prosecutor’s Office, had not been fully complied with. In particular, no meaningful action had been taken to identify N.Z., to summon some of the members of the ambulance team for questioning and to reconcile factual discrepancies between various witness testimonies.
16.  On 10 February 2012 the District Prosecutor’s Office took a fresh decision not to institute proceedings. It noted, in particular, that it was no longer possible to question D., the principal witness, as he had died; that, according to Dr. S. of the ambulance team and officer P., who had participated in the initial on-site examination, neither of them had approached or examined the body so closely as to confirm or deny that there had been blood around it or other injuries potentially inflicted by third parties. Z., the medical expert, who had initially examined the body on site, and Sh., another ambulance team member, could not be questioned as they had moved out of Sevastopol and could not be located. B., another member of the ambulance team, reported that she could not recall the details of the incident. Notwithstanding impossibility to re-examine certain sources of evidence and to reconcile minor factual discrepancies, there was no reason to doubt the principal conclusion that there had been no crime committed against Mr Mashchenko, who had died of a sudden heart attack. Inter alia, according to the statements by the president of the garage cooperative complex, there had been no garage box owner called N.Z. and Mr Mashchenko had in any event not been in conflict with anyone. There was no other evidence whatsoever in support of the applicant’s unsubstantiated hypothesis concerning a car accident or an assault.
17.  According to the applicant, she learned of this decision and obtained its copy only on receipt of the Government’s observations in the present case. She also submitted that throughout the course of the proceedings the District Prosecutor’s Office had routinely failed to update her on the progress of the case, apprise her of the decisions taken, provide her with copies thereof, and respond to her inquiries in a coherent and meaningful way.